Phage settled resignedly into her iron seat.
Braids swooped forward, setting the platter on the floor and kneeling before her champion. Eyes sparking avidly, Braids relaxed her grip. The red gobbet withdrew between closing retractors. She set the device to Phage's lips and gently squeezed. Her lips were forced outward. The meat jabbed between her teeth. It settled, still warm, on her tongue. The fork withdrew. The retractors closed.
Braids smiled. "I think we've worked it out. No more rot."
Chewing quietly, Phage nodded.
"You fought well today, little sister," said Braids as she absently skewered another hunk of meat. She twirled it to keep a drip from falling away. "Aggressively. Like never before."
"I fought my brother-"
Braids's utensil interrupted the words, forcing Phage's lips back. "He's not your brother. He was Jeska's brother, not yours."
"Jeska is dead," answered Phage as she had been taught. Her corpse lay there amid the weeds, dead hands clutching her dead belly. She had been taught to remember standing outside her corpse and looking down at it.
"Why are you holding your stomach?" Braids asked.
Phage released her grip. "I'm not hungry-'
"It's not that," Braids said as she inserted another morsel. "Open your robe."
Phage did, revealing the jagged scar sewn closed with black stitches.
"Jeska had a wound there. A killing wound. You have a scar. It's completely different."
"I'm completely different." Phage pulled the silk back around her waist.
Braids intently watched her. One eye glowed with love, the other with hate. "You are different. Completely." She blinked, and only compassion remained. "The First has plans for you, little sister."
He stood there beneath the oil painting of himself, and Jeska was unsure which looked more alive. The First's skin was as gray and smooth as stone. He wore robes of black hide, gleaming with oil to keep them supple, and a tall black miter. Eight attendants accompanied him, wearing the Cabal's livery of hand and skull. He touched no one, for his touch could kill. Only his hand servants touched for him, and his skull servants did the bidding of his mind. She had known she would be sick in his presence, and she was, and the hand servants cleaned it up. She had not known he would invite her into his killing embrace. It stung. It blistered. It burned, but she did not die. She was different. Completely.
"He has plans for me?" Phage asked, feeling still that stunning, killing touch.
"Yes. He wants to see you."
"When?"
Braids positioned the utensil between her lips and squeezed. A too-large hunk of meat shoved between the widening retractors. Though most of it cleared her teeth, the juices that dribbled from it turned rancid on her lips. "As soon as you are done eating."
Chewing, swallowing, Phage pushed the plate away with her toe. Immediately, the meat turned gray and then mottled white and black, with maggots crawling through it. "I am done."
"You've always been different, little sister," Braids said, "since before I made you."
Phage marched across the desert, feeling the occasional goad of a stick in her side. Braids drove her like a skinner driving a mule. "You didn't make me," she said absently. Phage was elsewhere, feeling the jab of a worse goad, an iron bar tipped in jagged glass, and she fell in the arena sands beneath the gloating smile of Braids. "He made me."
Braids's face hardened. "Kamahl did not make you. He killed you."
"No, not him" Those killing arms wrapped around her. "The First made me." At last, Phage had caught Braids short, with nothing to say. "Did he think I would die when he embraced me? Was it an execution? Or did he think I would become… what I am?"
"You have always been different."
Phage and Braids stood side by side in the dark antechamber. The walls were soot-black, papered in black vellum and hung with gold-gilded portraits. Fat candles on silver sticks glowed solemnly beside glass doors. The women had come straightaway. They had been waiting for more than an hour.
Phage stood unmoving in her black silk suit-tall, straight, and imperturbable. She was not confined to the present time and space but wandered the whole of her life. Whether surrounded by iron bars or silver candlesticks, she conversed with memories.
Braids was fit to be tied. Short, crooked, irate, she clutched arms across her chest to keep from cracking her knuckles. One leg jittered impatiently, and her teeth skirled slowly across each other. Still, her composure was admirable, given that her mind was turning back flips.
The glass doors parted and swung inward. Two glaze-eyed attendants appeared in the space, stooping just slightly as they conveyed the doors to rest against the antechamber's walls. The emblem of a yellow hand showed on their chests. The First had many hands-all those in the Cabal were his hands-but these servants physically touched and grasped for him. One stood to either side, bowed, and motioned the two women into the inner sanctum.
Level-eyed, Phage strode forward.
Braids snorted and took a hitch step to catch up to her.
They passed between the attendants, who swung the doors closed behind them. Braids eyed them suspiciously. In the fall of Cabal City, the First had lost his hand servants and had lived for a time as a social amputee. Eventually, he had gained new hands, this time making sure they were hands that could kill.
The servants followed Braids and Phage into a room that was cavernous, though it felt small. Black walls, deep carpet, dark portraits like cave mouths to either side, polished mahogany tables, thick-embroidered seats, and candles that seemed to rob the room of light and warmth-all shrank the space. The presence of the man on the other side made it claustrophobic.
The First stood staring at them. His eyes were like obsidian, and his face was like limestone. He did not move beneath the portrait of himself. His black robes were utterly still. To either side stood more attendants, eyes downcast Braids clenched her fists, warring with the nauseous aura that surrounded the man. Her eyes streamed. She trembled and repeatedly swallowed. A brief lurch in her stomach ended with a gulp-Phage had felt it too the first time she had entered his presence. Not now. She was accustomed to his dread aura. Her own skin emitted it.
The First moved, spreading his arms. Two of his hand attendants stepped toward the two women, but he stopped them with a simple "no." During any other audience, the hand attendants performed every manual task for the First, but not when Phage came calling.
She understood. Like called to like. She walked steadily toward him. A small smile came to his lips and to hers. She opened her arms as well. They two, who could not touch any whom they would not kill-they could touch one another. It was an extravagant intimacy in their utterly solitary lives. They embraced. Death battled death. Skin poisoned skin. They felt the physical press of another being and were in that moment as father and daughter. Still, they were not the same. Phage's body burned with inner fire while the First's was unutterably cold.
The embrace ended. The small smiles that had begun it were lost in soured expressions.
Phage wasn't sure whether she regretted the hug or regretted its ending. She stepped back but lingered near the man.
"Phage," he said simply. He shook his head. "Phage, whose secret name is Jeska. Welcome."